by Alyc Helms
I leaned forward, forcing La Reina and Sadakat’s attention. “I trust you won’t look on this as a weakness to exploit later?”
Sadakat flinched and exchanged a long, silent look with La Reina. I tamped down on my fidgets. This was not going to work if I couldn’t trust everyone to do their part. Finally, Sadakat nodded. “You have my word.”
La Reina followed suit. “And mine.”
I relaxed. Slightly. “Thank you both. Once the Lady has attuned the node at Rincon Hill, Mr Wentworth will summon her to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, and so on to–”
“Wait,” Asha said, frowning at the map. “The Lady is attuning the nodes to the Shadow Realms. Who is attuning them to Alam al-Jinn?”
I hadn’t anticipated La Reina and Sadakat’s resistance to the Lady’s help, but this hurdle, I had. “I was rather hoping you might.”
The conference room rang with Asha’s laughter long enough to make everyone fidget. “Oh. Oh dear, but that is amusing. No.”
“I understand your reluctance, but there must be something–”
“There is no incentive in this realm or any other that could convince me to bind myself to a set of Voidland wards.”
“I’ll do it,” Abby said. Her scowl deepened at Asha’s renewed laughter. “I wasn’t joking.”
“Oh, Abby. You’d need to exit and re-enter each node. Even the purest metals pose a danger then. And even if you’re spared attuning the lighthouse, that leaves eight nodes for you to travel through. You don’t have it in you.”
“If you can do it, I can do it.”
“You’ll get yourself trapped, halfblood,” Asha snarled.
Abby brushed under her arm, where her gun would be if I hadn’t told her to leave it at home. “Well, that’s one way to get me out of your hair for good.”
Tetching and rolling her eyes like a surly teenager, Asha sank back in her chair. “Oh, fine. I will do it.” She leaned back further to address Sadakat behind Abby’s back. “We can discuss my generous compensation package later.”
Leaning as she was, Asha missed Abby’s slight smile and the wink she threw me. I tipped my hat as though to say “well played.”
La Reina stood, tapping each ritual spot on the map. “You only have seven on the ground. Who will do the summoning at the final node?”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll have my motorcycle waiting at Rincon Hill. There should be time for me to get across the city so that the Lady and I – and Asha – can close the conduit that we opened at the lighthouse.”
“And the city on both sides of the veil will be safe once more,” the Lady concluded.
“Yeah. No more earthquakes. At least, no unnatural earthquakes,” Shimizu said. I could have kissed her for reminding us why we were all here.
I leaned over and retrieved the maps, folding them carefully. “You all know what you need to do to prepare. Are there any questions?”
Sadakat already had her tablet out and was tapping away. “Argent has approved our requisition of the purified titanium, but it will take at least a day for La Reina and me to identify the nine purest samples.”
I walked them to the door. “Work as fast as you reasonably can. We need to be ready when Lao Hu moves.”
“Just keep that shit far away from me.” Asha’s voice echoed down the hall as the Argent contingent departed. “Although… purified titanium? How much of that do you think Argent would approve as my payment?”
I stopped Johnny as he made his way out. “You were oddly silent,” I said, wondering if that meant he thought my plan was a good one, or doomed to fail.
He hitched a shoulder. “My part is fairly simple. Wait at the cable car museum for the call, integrate this set of wards with the various existing networks. I’ll see if I can arrange some backup if you don’t mind. The other guardians have a bit of experience with this sort of thing.”
I sighed, relieved. He didn’t think the plan was a disaster. “I didn’t wish to impose on them, but I would welcome their assistance.”
Johnny nodded, grin cracking his solemn mien. “You know that any plan with more than three moving parts is doomed to failure.”
So much for winning his approval. “Thank you for that rousing vote of confidence,” I deadpanned, ignoring his cheerful parting wave.
Mei Shen and David had reopened the Alcatraz map. The Lady had cornered a rather terrified-looking Jack to correct his sigils. Which just left Shimizu and myself in the doorway.
“Bye-bye, boys,” she murmured under her breath.
I found it impossible not to answer the call with the appropriate response. “Have fun storming the prison.”
“Seriously, though. Do you think this will work?” she asked, sounding more worried than Carol Kane.
I found myself wishing the following line wasn’t quite so accurate a reflection of my estimation of our success. “It will take a miracle.”
* * *
The next two days were a demonstration of a controlled descent into insanity – mine. I returned to the Lady’s camp and holed up in her yurt lest I undo all her hard work of laying false trails. With David driving the Lady down to the city and Shimizu and Jack waiting to hop onto the next Alcatraz ferry at a moment’s notice, my main sources of contact were otherwise occupied. The Lady’s camp was empty save for a few gargoyles. The rest of her army was waiting in the crevasse at the mouth of the long passage.
I spent most of the time considering the myriad of ways my plan could go wrong.
Thankfully, the Lady and David were in the camp when Templeton arrived with the news that Lao Hu had caught the scent of his quarry and gone on the prowl. David shunted across to the real world to make the go call, and we four took the gargoyle express to the mouth of the Alcatraz passage.
There seemed to be more to the Lady’s army than before. More gargoyles, more kraben, more goblins. I spotted at least five pairings of ambulatory octopodes, though only the one pair wielded a baseball bat. And Estelle, the headless ghost bride, walked among the mob. As did my Blood-Dimmed Tide, with Templeton and Red Rover at its head.
When I asked, the Lady waved an elegant hand. She’d taken to wearing her version of my face when she was in the Shadow Realms. And my mended coat. “I have diverted the power I’m drawing to them, and recruited what new allies were available. If it leads to our success, we will be grateful for it. If we fail, then it is all moot.”
I donned my hat, deepening the shadows beneath the brim – my version of my grandfather’s face. “Every battle should begin with a bit of cheerful nihilism, I suppose,” I said, and waved for her to precede me into the passage.
“Says you,” David muttered, passing me. “King Henry can keep his honor. I’ll take the ten thousand extra forces, thanks.”
I chuckled and followed before I could be swallowed up in the army at our heels. We few, indeed.
Any urge to laugh had been crushed by the weight of stone and darkness and fear by the time we reached the other end of the tunnel. We stopped at the soot-dark grate that led to the overgrown bowels of the Officer’s Club. It had not changed in the few days since David, Mei Shen, and I made our escape. The foliage grew dense as any jungle; the crumbling walls rose to a cloud-racing sky as dark as a photo negative. I couldn’t see any of the raptors, but I heard them rustling above, creaking and cawing at each other over the hollow sound of the wind.
“We will draw the knights north first,” the Lady said as her army squeezed past us and took cover under the brambles. What had seemed many in the narrow crevasse and the narrower passage now seemed too few. “They will think we are making an attempt to steal their power source. That will give Mr Tsung time to set the node and lay down the sigils. Then we will retreat to the south.”
I patted Estelle’s shoulder as she passed me. The lace cuff of her thrift-store bridal gown caressed my cheek in response. “And Asha and I will recover Skyrocket and meet you both back at the lighthouse. Assuming she shows. Where is she?”
Asha had
listened to our description of the tunnel and said she’d make her own arrangements for getting to Alcatraz. I didn’t like it, but she wouldn’t be budged.
“It is only a matter of time before we are discovered and lose the element of surprise,” the Lady said, following her army out into the overgrown hollow. “We cannot wait long for her.”
“And you don’t have to,” whispered a shadow, detaching itself from all the other shades lurking under the black scorched walls. Asha pushed up a pair of high-tech goggles and pulled down the mask covering her lower face. The rest of her was covered in dark, form-fitting tactical gear similar to what she’d been wearing at the Academy. “Took you long enough to get here.”
I was surprised Abby had any teeth left. If I’d had to deal with Asha’s smiles all these years, I’d have long ago ground mine to nubbins.
“And now we go,” said the Lady, even as the raptors nesting in the top of the walls took to the blackened skies with screeches and caws of alarm.
David, Asha, and I pressed back into the mouth of the passage, watching the Lady’s army surge up the escarpment and over the lip onto the road. Raptor bodies rained down as the gargoyles noisily dispatched the early warning system.
We watched until the raucous cries of the Lady’s army faded north to a distant roar. David roused and crept out of the passage. I grabbed his arm. “Be safe.”
His glance flicked down to my hand and back to me, bemused. “You care?”
Only slightly less annoying than Asha, I decided. My teeth were doomed. “Mei Shen will never speak to me again if I get you killed.”
David nodded. “I’ll be as safe as I can while still being effective.”
I released his arm, chuckling. “Keep that up, and I may start liking you myself.”
“That’s the plan.” He winked and departed.
“And now we wait again,” I muttered.
“There is no need,” Asha said. “Among the many things they have been stealing from Argent, the Conclave has managed to take some of their purified titanium stores as well. I can sense it. North. Likely in the same building where they are keeping Skyrocket. I can take us there directly.”
I stepped back before she could take my arm, paranoia prickling all down my spine. “That wasn’t the plan.”
She rolled her eyes. “It is a better plan. And one I could not have suggested until I was close enough to know the titanium was here, so it is not as though I deliberately kept it from you.” She spread her hands. “Come. You’re the one who helped bind me. Don’t you trust me?”
I didn’t want to. Because I had helped bind her. The sounds of battle had receded entirely. It was just us two in the hollow. Possibly just us on this entire side of the island. We would be safer sticking to the original plan of sneaking north along the road.
“How do you propose we get to it? It is not like there’s much in the way of unalloyed metal lying around, and what with wishing to avoid building resonance, I doubt you brought any with you.”
“No, but you did.” She cocked her head to one side, her hip to the other. “I would have thought you stupid not to. As apparently you think me stupid. Did you miss the part where I can sense it?”
Oh. Right. I told the part of me that was howling suspicion to shut up. I’d already decided to trust Asha. It made little sense to start doubting her now. I dug into a pocket of my overcoat, the one not stuffed with glow sticks for a quick escape from the Shadow Realms, and pulled out a vacuum-sealed package that contained a bar of Argent’s purified titanium.
Asha smiled and took the packet, cracking the seal. “Excellent. Now, hold on to your hat, Old Man. This may sting a bit.” She took my arm, grabbed the bar of metal, and the world erupted into smoke and flame.
* * *
In my time I have feared the Shadow Realms even as I sought to master them. I have cringed in gibbering terror from the Voidlands. I spent fifteen years in the timeless peace of a spirit realm that was as close to heaven as I’m likely to come, and I have been seared by the reflected light of whatever heaven La Reina serves.
I have never felt a realm burn me down to the very core of my being like Alam al-Jinn did. It wasn’t flame scorching my skin to crackling char. The heat erupted from within, the marrow of my bones cooking my muscles, my flesh. Even the air in my lungs was fire as I screamed.
And then… it was gone. I stumbled to my knees from the sudden absence of pain, ran frantic hands over my face, my arms, expecting charred bits of me to slough off. Nothing. I was fine. Whole. The shadows I used to conceal my face had been seared away, but other than that, my jaunt through Alam al-Jinn hadn’t harmed me in the least. Only the memory of the pain remained, and my mind was already scrambling to rationalize that away.
“Yes, the first time’s a bit rough,” someone said. Asha. She caught me under the armpits and helped me to my feet. “Probably worse for you. Oh, we have company.”
Her bright comment was all the warning I got before a fist slammed into my gut. New pain replaced the old. Only Asha’s hold on me kept me from staggering back and keeling over. She pushed me upright and shoved me forward into the fight. “Go get ’em, Old Man.”
Another fist came at me. I danced aside – well, stumbled really – using the moment of transition to catch my breath and bearings, and to assess the trap Asha had led me into.
We’d emerged into a darkened cavern, its walls covered with bubbles of dimly glowing light. No. Wrong. The walls were too even, the bubbles too square and regimented. Building. Windows. A warehouse. I put my back to a wall lined with grey-cased commercial generators that hummed loudly enough to make my teeth and bones ache. The thing looming before me was larger than any Conclave knight I’d ever faced, but built along the same lines. Shifting, organic plates shielded its body rather than the usual semi-medieval armor that most of the knights wore.
Asha crouched behind the knight beside a toppled stack of crates. One of them had burst open, and a fortune in Argent’s purified titanium bars rolled across the floor. She was digging in her bag, or possibly shoving the titanium into it. The knight didn’t give me much time to worry about what she was up to. It picked its way towards me, off-balance thanks to a network of wrist-thick cables that ran from the generators at the far end of the room, past me, and out the open door. I could hear screams and howls from outside – the Lady’s army?
The knight cleared the cables and charged me again. I dodged under its arms. So, big and armored, but not that bright.
A second knight rose up from behind the crates, blindsiding me with a running tackle. We rolled across the floor of the warehouse. I came out on the bottom, thick cable crossing under my back. The knight pressed down. I could barely catch my breath much less find any leverage to flip him off.
“Asha!” I dug my fingers into the crack between two of the plates. Impossible. If there was a weakness there, I wasn’t going to find it before I was crushed to unconsciousness. “A-sha!”
A boot connected just below the plate I was scraping at. Not mine. The knight grunted and sagged to one side. Asha hopped over my legs, raising something black and gun-like. Light flashed strobe-fast with a frenetic ticking sound like a Tesla coil on speed. She shoved her hand against the shoulder of the reeling knight, and he went into convulsions.
Before I could reassess who was on whose side, the first knight roared and launched himself at Asha’s back. I tangled his limbs with my legs, tripping him before he could reach her. The carapace covering him didn’t offer much in the way of weakness, so I improvised. I snatched up the cable digging a groove into my back and flung a loop of it around his head. Glomming onto his back like an Atreides riding a sandworm, I dug my heels into his shoulder blades and pulled for all I was worth. My palms burned from the scrape of textured metal weave against my skin. I only loosed my hold when the knight flagged and fell to the floor next to his still-twitching friend.
I stumbled off him, wiping my burning palms on my trousers. Asha shook her taser, clicke
d the trigger a few times. It failed to emit even a faint tic-tic. She grimaced and tossed it aside. The clatter of plastic on cement echoed loudly in the cavernous room. “This place. Sucks power worse than a smartphone app hogging the GPS. Which makes me wonder,” she tapped one of the grey-cased generators. “What sort of juice is powering these lovelies?” She glanced over at the knights. “We should dispose of them.”
I backed up a few steps, nearly tripping over one of the cables. “I don’t think–”
Asha huffed and drew a black-bladed combat knife from a back sheath, plunging it beneath the neck armor of both knights with surgical precision. She wiped the blade on her own thigh when the knights dissipated into pools of shadow. “We really don’t have time for squeamishness,” she muttered and headed for a door half-hidden by the grey-cased machinery.
Right. Right. I tried to rationalize that they weren’t people. They were shaped by the Conclave, possibly from remnants of the Voidlands. Probably using the same energy coursing through those generators and cables. Even so, I stepped around the spot where the knights had fallen. “I thought for a moment that you were going to–”
“Betray you? I know.” Asha laid a hand flat on the steel door, tapping her fingers over the metal and along the seam of the doorway, up to an electronic keypad. “Don’t worry. I’m used to it.”
I pulled the shadows back around my face, using that to recover my equilibrium. “Even so, I apologize.”
“The amount of this purified titanium Argent is going to be giving me in payment, I can put up with a bit of suspicion.” She tapped the keypad. “The door, the generators. All of this is real. None of it is created from shadow. They brought it here from the real world.”
I studied the door, the generators and cables. “Perhaps it’s part of the technology they’ve been stealing from Argent’s facilities?”
Asha nodded. “Must be. We can’t take it all.”